bowlby's theory of maternal deprivation

• continued emotional care is essential

  • continuous emotional (maternal) care from a mother or mother-substitute is necessary for normal emotional and intellectual development
  • Bowlby believed that mother-love in infancy is 'as important for mental health as are vitamins and proteins for physical health'
  • separation may lead to maternal deprivation
• separation is different from deprivation

  • separation = means the child not being physically in the presence of the primary attachment figure
  • deprivation = means losing emotional care as a result of the separation
  • deprivation can be avoided if alternative emotional care is offered, thus separation doesn't always cause deprivation
• critical period = 2 1/2 years

  • if a child is separated from their mother (without substitute emotional care) for an extended time during the first 2 1/2 years, then psychological damage is inevitable
  • continuing risk up to the age of 5
• intellectual development = lower IQ

  • if a child is deprived of maternal care for too long during the critical period this may lead to mental retardation
  • Goldfarb = found lower IQs in children from institutions compared to foster children
• emotional development = affectionless psychopathy

  • lack of emotional care may also lead to affectionless psychopathy
  • AP = the inability to experience guilt or strong emotion towards others
  • this prevents the person developing normal relationships and is associated with criminality
• Bowlby 44 thieves study = procedure

  • sample in study = 44 delinquent teenagers accused of stealing
  • all 'thieves' were interviewed for signs of AP: characterised by lack of affection, guilt and empathy
  • families were also interviewed to establish and prolonged separations from mothers
• Bowlby 44 thieves study = findings/conclusions

  • 14/44 thieves = could be described as AP
  • 12 of the 14 had experienced prolonged separation from their mothers in the first 2 years of their lives
  • in contrast = only 5 of the remaining 30 'thieves' had experienced separations
  • suggests that prolonged early separation/deprivation caused AP
• limitation = sources of evidence for maternal deprivation are flawed

  • 44 thieves study is flawed because it was open to bias = Bowlby himself assessed both deprivation and psychopathy, knowing what he hoped to find
  • Goldfarb's study of wartime orphans = flawed because he used traumatised participants who lacked good aftercare (this introduced confounding variables)
  • => means that Bowlby originally had no solid evidence on which to base his theory of maternal deprivation
• Counterpoint to flawed evidence

  • Some evidence from newer studies to support the theory of maternal deprivation
  • Eg = Levy et al = found that separating baby rats for one day had permanent effect on their social development
  • Means that there is now some evidence for the theory of maternal deprivation after all
• limitation = Bowlby confused deprivation and privation

  • Rutter = made the distinction between deprivation (separation from an attachment figure) and privation (failure to form an attachment)
  • Privation has more serious effects
  • The children Bowlby studied (eg the 44 thieves) and others he based his ideas on (eg Goldfarb’s wartime orphans) may have been prived rather than deprived
  • Means that Bowlby probably exaggerated the effects of deprivation on development
• limitation = critical period is more of a sensitive period

  • Koluchova = conducted a case study on Czech twin boys isolated from age 18 months (locked in a cupboard)
  • Later they were looked after by two loving adults and appeared to recover fully
  • Shows that severe deprivation can have positive outcomes provided the child has some social interaction and good aftercare
  • Means that the period identified by Bowlby may be a ‘sensitive’ one but it cannot be critical
• extra evaluation = conflicting evidence

  • Replications of Bowlby’s 44 thieves study (eg Lewis) have generally failed to reproduce his findings on psychopathy
  • BUT = some more recent research (eg Gao et al) has found links between poor maternal care and adult psychopathy
  • Means the link between maternal deprivation and psychopathy are unclear